Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 8 1 



by some state of our organs dependent on the vital processes, or 

 by recollections suggested by memory, we have enumerated every 

 mode of cognition which can produce phenomena of sensation. 

 Causes real and ideal present and past all these elements are 

 added to each other, placed in juxtaposition and fusion, and 

 neutralize each other, so as to produce these complex sensations, 

 which make their appearance very slowly, both in the individual 

 and in the species. Thus, the sentiment of nature in a poet of 

 the nineteenth century, a Byron or a Goethe, is the result of so 

 great a number of actual perceptions, recollections, and ideas 

 blended together, that it defies the analysis of the most accom- 

 plished psychologist. The psychology of the sentiments, more- 

 over, is far from being as advanced as that of the intellect. 



In studying the sentiments, we may do so either as naturalists 

 or as metaphysicians. In the former case, we describe and classify 

 the various phenomena of sensibility; this is the work of the 

 psychologist. In the other case, we strive to reduce all these 

 phenomena to their law, their ultimate cause ; and this is the work 

 of the philosopher. 



The descriptive method is much indebted to contemporary 

 physiologists and psychologists, and particularly to Mr. Bain in 

 his great work, The Emotions and the Will. Still, there is no 

 definite classification of phenomena of the affections, for this can 

 only be founded on an embryology of the sentiments, which has, as 

 yet, no existence. Every naturalist knows that a natural classi- 

 fication is based on anatomy, physiology, and embryology. So, 

 too, in psychology, until we have investigated and described the 

 manifestations of sentiment in the animal kingdom, and in 

 the lower races, with a view to a comparative psychology; 

 until we have traced the evolution of the sentiments, in the 

 individual and in the species, in order to ascertain its genesis, 

 it will be impossible to arrive at a natural,, objective, stable classi- 

 fication. 



Since Spinoza, no essential contribution has been made to a 

 philosophical study of the ultimate reason of sensible phenomena. 

 Physiologists those, at least, who are acquainted with philosophy 

 appear to have the same opinion; for Miiller copies the third 

 book of Spinoza's Ethics > and Dr. Maudsley, in his recent work, 



